BUDGET cuts at Australia's biggest university, Monash, are an "early warning'' of the pain that may be in store for elite institutions across the country.
University of NSW chief Fred Hilmer said the loss of foreign students could force budget cuts on other universities in the elite Group of Eight unless the government made it clear to potential students overseas they were welcome.
"If (nothing is done) and the decline starts to pick up pace, then you will get budget cuts because (overseas student income is) a big part of all our budget streams," he said.
Monash vice-chancellor Ed Byrne said the university had to find $45 million in savings because of bigger-than-expected declines in overseas student numbers.
"The indications that we're getting from (our major markets in) Southeast Asia and China is that this is not a Monash issue, this is an Australian issue," he said.
The multi-billion-dollar education export industry has been hit by tougher rules for student visas, the high Australian dollar, bad publicity from attacks on Indian students, doubts about quality and aggressive recruitment by the US and Britain.
The University of Melbourne's vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, said many institutions faced "significant falls" in overseas enrolments beginning next year and Indian student numbers could plummet by 90 per cent.
"The entire Australian higher education system depends on revenue from international students, so the people who will lose out from this are the Australian students whose study is strongly supported by income from international students," he said.
Domestic students might end up paying higher fees, he said.
Media coverage has focused on the collapse of colleges as new skilled migration rules make it more difficult for foreign students to parlay low-quality diplomas in cooking and hospitality into permanent-residency visas.
But the Howard-era system that linked education and migration was also a revenue-earner for universities, who were expected by government to expand without a corresponding increase in their base funding rate for domestic students.
"The universities that have become more reliant on international student income are more exposed now," said Jeannie Rea, president of the National Tertiary Education Union. "The chickens are coming home to roost."
Professor Byrne said Labor's reform of the trade in low-value qualifications and permanent-residency visas was necessary.
But the tougher rules and checks for visas were undiscriminating and were discouraging bona-fide applicants who wanted to study, not migrate.
"There's been an unintended overshoot and the quality university providers are starting to be caught up in it," he said.
A middle-class family in China, for example, had to lodge up to $130,000 in a bank account for six months to show the ability to cover three years in course fees and living expenses, he said.
Professor Hilmer said a student from a first-rate Malaysian university with government sponsorship to do a PhD would be subjected to the same intensive background checks as someone with poor English coming for a low-level qualification.
Source:http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/pain-in-store-for-top-universities/story-e6frgcjx-1225938920860
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